On OpenNTF: xspless - a LESS CSS Builder for Domino Designer

Posted by Mark Leusink on July 3, 2014

LESS
(Leaner CSS) is a dynamic stylesheet language that allows you to use variables,
nesting, functions (and more) in your CSS file. LESS files can be compiled
into plain CSS file. xspless
is the name of a new project that Jesse Gallagher created. It is a LESS
CSS Builder for Domino Designer. From the documentation:

"This is an Eclipse builder plugin
for Designer. By installing this plugin, right-clicking on an application,
and choosing "Add/Remove LESS CSS Nature", it allows Designer
to automatically compile LESS files to normal CSS versions. It matches
two types: stylesheet resources with names in the form "foo.less.css"
(because Designer automatically appends the ".css"), in which
case it creates a file named "foo.css" next to it, and file resources
elsewhere (e.g. File Resources or WebContent) with names in the form "foo.less",
in which case it creates a new file next to it named "foo.less.css"
(to avoid overwriting similarly-named normal-CSS files)."

In short: if you add a mystyles.less
file to the WebContent folder, Domino Designer will automatically (when
the application is "build") create a mystyles.css file in the
same folder containing the compiled CSS version of the LESS source file.
The download comes with the full source of the project: it also is a good
example on how to extend Designer's build process.